For all you artists out there, an alternate version of the open source image manipulation application GIMP (similar to Photoshop)which simulate natrual media such as oil paints or watercolours similar to Painter or MyPaint (also Open source)

For any of you who have or are thinking of setting up your own YouTube channel then you could do a lot worse than have a look at this little article which shows eight ways to improve a YouTube channel.

A good selection of video tutorials on the use of Blender 3D 2.5. Here is what they have to say about themselves.

We're a group of hobbists from all around the world, that love game development, open source and art. With the help of technology and Internet, we're getting together on a constant basis in order to learn new exciting things, to have fun playing computer games and to work on something greater, our first game project, which some of you will hopefully get to enjoy in the near future or even contribute to.

Something which is always a chore is finding the right image for your project especially in education where there often isn't the money to pay for images or the time to get the person with the purse strings to pay for a stock image.

Stock.xchng is a nice online stock photography site which I came across the other day which has a large amount of free (both cost and royalty wise), I've certainly found myself using it for a number of projects which required a quick turnaround.

The following 2 links were brought to my attention through the JISC Mailing list: MOODLE-UK@JISCMAIL.AC.UK. Someone initially asked a question about the inconsistencies being reported in viewing powerpoint files directly from Moodle. These two links in particular look really interesting.

EasyView, developed by Richard and the team at VLE Middleware is a free tool that allows you to open and view Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDF, OpenOffice documents without having any of those software packages installed. It’s an excellent solution for students who need to access content, but may not have the necessary software installed on their own machines.VLe Middleware (http://www.vlemiddleware.com )

An innovative project using twitter to teach history, Winchester House School in collaboration with other schools and colleges set up a twitter feed where each took on a persona in the gunpowder plot and tweeted in character to unveil the story of the plot and it’s events as a teaching aid for their pupils.

This sort of approach could easily be applied to creative writing or even as part of a performance, a novel way of developing a story plotline and character backgrounds before even a work of the story/script itself is written!

I recently came across this excellent resource on QR Codes by Tom Barrett for those of you not familiar with QR codes here is the Wikipedia definition of them.

A QR Code is a matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code), readable by QR scanners, mobile phones with a camera, and smartphones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on white background. The information encoded can be text, URL or other data.

Common in Japan, where it was created by Toyota subsidiary Denso-Wave in 1994, the QR code is one of the most popular types of two-dimensional barcodes. QR is the abbreviation for Quick Response, as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed.

They are gaining in popularity in education but as with many new technologies there is much confusion and misunderstanding about them. Below is a link to a Google Docs' presentation covering 28 uses of QR code in the classroom and I recommend you take a look if you're thinking of using them or just want to know what their all about.

An interesting message from Adobe dropped into my inbox the other day advertising a new up and coming service come application. Design to be a user friendly interactive media developer aimed at both the home and workplace the intention is to put the power and creative freedom normally experienced by multimedia developers in an application which the rest of us mere mortals can use with relative ease. There is also an education version aimed at the production of more engaging interactive learning material for teaching and training.

ROME comes in two parts an installable application which ties into an online service. With it you can produce a variety of things including websites, presentations, publications, animations and learning objects.

ROME is currently being offered as a free preview – public bête and they are inviting people to have a go and see what they think, likewise for the educational version they are looking for institutions who would be interested in trialling the application as part of pilot projects.

It's always interesting to see a new techie gadget come into the marketplace and even more so when it's something that seems to a) work well and b) be immediately applicable to the HE sector. So, you can imagine my growing delight when I read the following BoingBoing article: Livescribe Pulse Smartpen: It's a Keeper

Basically it's a pen that records digital audio and digital copy of what you write with it. My mind boggles at how much easier my life would have been as a student had I had one of these...

This post was to demonstrate the use of mobile technology and its application to an educational context, to a group of Kenyan colleagues who are over here for the purpose of exploring the Professional Certificate in Academic Practice (PCAP).

I've been looking into a whole pile of future technologies of recent and many of them are years away - real Tomorrow's World stuff. One, though, is just around the corner and being built into currently available applications as we speak (you can even grab one or two for the iPhone and similar devices).

The technology in question goes by the name of Augmented Reality and is, in general, the idea of overlaying virtual space and information over the top of real world. As an example, the iPhone app I've seen working uses the phones camera and screen to overlay markers for London Tube stations on top of the real world. The authors plan to add in adverts (special offers over the top of shops etc) to make the app pay for itself in the long run although for the moment it's just a clean view of where to walk to get the tube.

The interesting thing, for me, is where this sort of thing might go for education - I'm pretty sure I can envision you looking at an academic and seeing a list of papers, modules being taught, available tutorials etc etc. And - overlaid next to a friend, their recent twitter posts, facebook status etc.

It's all very exciting and just around the corner :)

I was going to link to a few specific videos of AR in action but that would really deny the sheer volume and diversity of AR projects underway at the moment so instead I give you the following Youtube search link: